Doppler's Earbuds Are Way More Than Just Wireless Headphones

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Doppler's Earbuds Are Way More Than Just Wireless Headphones

Doppler

Doppler Labs, the company behind the straight-outta-science-fiction earbuds that let you control the volume of the world, has a new product out today. It's called Here One, and you guessed it, it's another set of wireless earbuds. But these aren't just for tweaking the sound mix at a concert, or tuning out subway noise. Here One is all that, plus everything you'd expect from a standard set of wireless headphones, and then even more stuff on top of that.

The Here One buds will cost $299 when they ship in November. This company's never been short on ambition or confidence: Doppler calls them "the last thing you'll ever put in your ears." (Sorry, Q-tips.) The Here Ones are, at the simplest level, a set of wireless headphones. They can stream music, take calls, interact with Siri and Google Now, and the like. Normally I wouldn't spell these things out for a pair of headphones, but Doppler's previous Here buds couldn't do those things. What they could do, and what the Here One buds supposedly do even better, is let you filter and change the noise of the real world. Using the companion app, you can change frequency response, tune out things like baby screams and train screeches, or turn up the volume of the people in front of you. There are multiple directional mics inside the Here One buds, so the sound editing becomes even more powerful.

Doppler

Doppler really loves the idea that its products work for absolutely everyone, no matter their situation. "We are not a medical device," says Doppler CEO Noah Kraft. "But we do think that there is this crazy false binary, that people either can hear or can't hear." When you first set up your Here Ones, you'll go through a customization process, so the software can learn the particulars of your ears and hearing and thus attenuate sound specifically for you.

Once you're up and running, you'll also be able to mix real-world sound with whatever you're listening to, in what Doppler calls "layered listening." Instead of jamming headphones into your ears to drown out the world, you can have it sound as though your music's playing from a speaker a few feet away. You can hear Chance The Rapper and whoever you're talking to, or listen to Radiolab on your bike and still hear the cars flying by.

Doppler's only one of a number of companies working on truly wireless headphones. If the last buds are any indication, the Here Ones will be among the most comfortable and usable of the lot. But don't ask Doppler to be proud of that. "The interesting engineering is not the wireless headphones," says executive chairman Fritz Lanman. "That’s the table-stakes stuff." He's right: soon enough, everyone from Apple to Samsung to Microsoft is going to try and sell you wireless earbuds. Doppler's trying to go way beyond that, to change the way users hear altogether. To put a computer in their ears, and see what happens next.